Pam, Jim and a Purple Moonbounce Castle
by Aracalien
Summary: You knew this was coming. Featuring Michael's safety visual aid and our favorite noncouple. Oneshotspoilers for Safety Training


Disclaimer: I don't own the Office or Harry Potter.

Spoilers for 'Safety Training'

* * *

"Dwight, call the toy store and get the castle taken care of."

"I'm on it."

Dwight sprints out of Michael's office.

Michael drums his fingers on his desk and gives the camera an awkward smile. "So today was a success, I think. Because of my safety demonstration, everyone can safely be depressed in the workplace."

Dwight suddenly appears back in the doorway.

"Michael?"

"Mmm?"

"By taken care of do you mean deflate it, load it in my Trans Am and bring it to the store, or call their people and have _them _pick it up? Or I could-"

"Just have someone come and pick it up! Jeez Dwight!" Michael looks at the camera, shaking is head.

"Right. Got it."

"Good."

"Michael?"

Michael sighs exasperatedly. "_What _Dwight?"

"What time, exactly, do you want it removed?"

Michael looks at the camera again and hits his head on his desk. One of his plastic light-up tops falls off the edge.

Dwight immediately retrieves it and puts it back before Michael lifts his head up.

"Jim!" yells Michael.

Jim Halpert stares intently at the computer screen. If he doesn't move, maybe Michael won't-

"_Jim!_"

Jim lets out the smallest of sighs and turns toward reception, out of habit. Pam looks surprised, but recovers and gives him her raised eyebrowed, wide-eyed, flat mouth look.

Jim gets up and takes a step toward her before shoving his hands in his pockets. He swivels back toward Michael's office.

"Jim, could you take care of the safety visual aid for me?"

"Safety visual aid…" Jim pretends to think about this. "Oh, you mean the moon-bounce!"

Michael glances at the camera. "Yes." He says in a small voice.

"Okay."

Jim walks out. There is a small, sideways smile on his face. He glances at reception before steering himself over to Karen's desk.

"Hey," Jim whispers as he crouches down. "So, listen. Michael has made me in charge of the _very_ important task of making sure his purple moon-bounce castle gets safely back to BigTop's Toy's, before it closes."

"Wow, this is quite the promotion," says Karen, nodding appreciatively.

Jim smiles. "Yeah. The thing is, though, BigTop's Toy's doesn't close until six o'clock. That is a _full _hour after work. So…what can I do with it until then?" Jim taps his chin and looks up at the ceiling, pretending, again, to be deep in thought.

"You can't be serious." Karen smiles, thinking Jim is still joking.

"Come on. It'll be fun-fresh air, exercise…it's something any working class adult should enjoy."

"It's made for eight-year olds."

"What's twenty years' difference, really, but a number? Right?"

Karen looks at him for a second. "I think I'll have to pass. I have to clean my apartment after work for my mom; I told you she was visiting today, remember?"

Jim doesn't remember. But she doesn't sound upset, at least.

"Right-did you want me to meet her?" This is really the last thing Jim feels like doing today, but he knows it's the polite thing to do.

Karen tries to smile apologetically. "I don't think so, Jim. It's nothing personal, but she generally doesn't like anyone I date."

Jim feels a bit put out by this comment. Who's to say Karen's mom wouldn't like him? Does Karen really think that little of him?

His face must be letting on to his sour feelings because Karen adds "But I'll make it up to you later. I _promise_. Okay?"

"That's okay, I'm not really in the mood." He lumbers back to his desk. Karen looks hurt, but Jim's back is turned and he doesn't notice.

The last half hour of work passes by unbearably slowly. Spider-solitaire loses its fun after three minutes. FreeCell and minesweeper are not much better.

Eight minutes killed. Twenty-two to go.

He sits in his desk chair and tries to break his personal best for 'longest time without blinking'. He breaks his one minute, five seconds record no problem, then breaks the new one.

He wonders idly if he should tell Pam. Jim is pretty sure she still has all of their personal bests written down somewhere. Breaking a record twice in one day must be some kind of record in itself.

Jim rubs his dry eyes and looks at the corner of his computer screen. The time under his 'azul ocean' desktop tells him there are still fifteen minutes to go.

"Hey, I'm heading out of here," says Karen as she walks by.

"Yeah, see you later." Jim barely looks as she leaves the room.

Reflecting off the sailboat sitting in the middle of his desktop ocean is reception. Pam's face is in shadow, and he wonders what it looks like right now. He guesses maybe she is deep in thought, playing solitaire. Or maybe she's doodling on post-it notes or plain feeling despondent and counting down the minutes, just like him.

He decides to find out.

Jim swivels his chair around and walks up to Pam. Again, she looks surprised. He feels a little bit saddened by this; he'd hardly visited reception at all for the past...has it been seven months?

"Hey, Beesly." He knows at once that he shouldn't have called her by the old nickname. She blushes and pushes her bangs behind her ear. They fall back in front of her face; Jim swallows hard. "What're you up to?"

"Well, I was working on this game. I call it 'sensations'. You have to see how long you can go without feeling the shoes on your feet."

Jim tries not to react to unintentional innuendo of playing a game called 'sensations' with Pam. Instead he says, "I think you might want to lay off sniffing the White-Out for a bit there, Beesly."

"Oh yeah, Halpert? Let's see how long you last."

He grins. This is what he really misses. "Alright, you're on." He takes a handful of jellybeans and hunches over the counter. "So, what do I do?"

"Well, normally people don't feel their clothes or shoes on them, until someone points them out. They are subconscious sensations; it's a neurological mechanism, there so that you don't go crazy feeling everything at once." Pam blushes again, but she doesn't break eye contact.

Jim's not so sure these are unintentional implications anymore. "So, you're saying our brains block out these feelings so we're not overwhelmed?"

"Exactly."

"Huh." Jim squints at the framed picture above her head. There's a glare across it from the florescent lights.

"Some people are not so good at it." Jim's heart skips a beat. "Like I bet the reason Michael is-the way he is-is because he wears those really tiny shoes and they constrict the circulation in his feet, so all of his mental energy that he would normally have for social grace is focused instead on his feet."

Pam says all of this in one breath and looks flushed.

Jim is aware of plenty of new 'sensations'.

"So he's like the Grinch?"

"Yes!" Pam giggles. "And Dwight is his 'Max'."

"No, _no, Pam_. Do you think Dwight could pull a giant sleigh all the way up a mountain, and then be so adorable that the Grinch decides to save Christmas after all? Dwight couldn't pull that off!."

Both of them are cracking up now, and he can't remember why he ever left this spot. It really was his spot. As Kevin pointed out, he'd spent hours and hours and _hours _standing on roughly the same patch of carpet.

"What were we talking about again?" asks Pam as she wipes her eyes.

"'Sensations'"

"Oh, right. Now Jim, in order to win this game you have to completely focus on your feet for about a minute and not think about anything else. Got it?"

"I thought the point of this game was to _not _think of your feet?"

"That's the second step, Halpert. Keep up."

"Ooh. Is that sass I hear, Beesly?" He's flirting with her, he knows it. But he can't seem to help it-or he doesn't want to.

Pam lifts her palm up and shrugs. "I call 'em as I see 'em. Now close your eyes."

Jim thinks he likes this game already.

"Now think about your toes and the feeling of your socks against your-_hey!"_

He peeks. He does it just for this very reaction.

"How old are you, Jim? Four? _Peeking_ already…"

Pam shakes her head solemnly at his immaturity. "Just for that I'm not going to teach you the game. Suck on that, Halpert."

Jim smiles. Just like old times.

"It sounded so _promising_, too."

"Hey! That's not fair-like you have any better ideas."

"As a matter of fact, _Beesly_, I have just the thing."

* * *

Twelve minutes later, both Pam and Jim are sitting in their cars in the parking lot. Both pretend to be busy fiddling with the radio or their keys, as their co-workers mill toward their respective cars and drive out of the Dunder Mifflin parking lot.

Jim stares at the steering wheel. Whatever he is doing, he is pretty sure Karen would be mad if she found out. But he really isn't doing anything. They're just friends.

Though, he has to admit as he steps out of the car smiles over at Pam across the deserted parking lot, this all feels pretty taboo.

They cross the parking lot side by side and don't say a word. They both know there is something just a little bit off about this.

But the image of a giant purple moon-bounce can do wonders to a guilty conscience.

"Dwight really picked out a good one, didn't he?" says Jim, to break the silence.

"Oh my gosh-Jim-_look_." Pam points to a small tag sewn on to the side of the castle and giggles. "'Hogwarts castle: Harry Potter, Warner Bros Co.'. Jim! Dwight ordered a Harry Potter castle for Michael to 'commit suicide' onto!"

Jim doubles over. It's too much, on top of all the-tension-going on. His laughs come out in yelps, like an insane person. But Pam is busy giggling, and doesn't seem to notice. He recovers quickly, and chuckles naturally.

"I can just picture Dwight asking the saleslady at BigTop's," says Jim. "'Would you happen to have a Mordor mountain to go with this? Preferably in black?'"

Pam grins as Jim lets her climb in first.

"It's not exactly as big as I remember these things being."

"No, definitely not," says Jim as he climbs in. They have to duck their heads and Pam is uncomfortably close. Not that it bothers him in a bad way…

Jim tries a bounce. Pam's knees buckle and she falls (where else?) right into him; Jim stumbles backwards and grabs air as they tumble into a corner in a tangle of knees, elbows and work clothes.

"Oof."

"Pam-are you alright?"

He can hear her muffled giggling into his back. "Better idea, huh?"

Jim peels his face off the vinyl. "The fun's not over yet, Beesly."

* * *

The next morning, Dwight is the first to arrive at work. He has to make it up to Michael for yesterday.

The lights are off when he enters the office, but that's only to be expected. He flicks them on.

Where his desk usually is, stands a large purple inflatable castle; next to it is a kiddie pool with what looks like all of his bobble heads standing in tiny paper boats pointed toward 'Hogwarts'. The 'Dwight' bobble head stands in the front, complete with a tiny magic-marker scar and toothpick wand in his hand.

"JIM!"

* * *

(A/n . I know, I know. This wouldn't happen. It's too out of character for Jim. But here's to hoping, right? This was too fun to resist. Oh, and I know that BigTop's not the real toy store. But for the life of me I can't remember what it was.

Also, the kiddie pool does not have water in it. Just in case you were wondering how paper boats could hold up a bobble head doll or two in water. They can't.

Reviews keep me alive, so- you wouldn't want me to die would you??

(Thanks a million for any reviews)


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